


Mosaic and Sediment

by vifetoile



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Biracial Character, Character Study, Childhood, Fat Character, Gen, Growing Up, Introspection, List Fic, Unhappy Childhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:42:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24889327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vifetoile/pseuds/vifetoile
Summary: A few facts about Mary Malone, in loosely chronological order. A fat girl's relationship with food, a biracial girl's relationship with her grandfather. You know, life.
Relationships: Mary Malone & Will Parry
Kudos: 8





	Mosaic and Sediment

  1. When Mary was a little girl, she wanted so badly to be a ballerina. She took classes, she wore poofy skirts, she spun and danced everywhere, including to the creek, which was the second love of her young life.
  2. The creek was a place of wonder. The little insects and animals, each so intent on its own life, its own thoughts, its own niche. Swirling water, crumbling earth, weeds and bugs, made a dance as intricate as Tchaikovsky.
  3. One day at age seven she returned home in a mud-splattered tutu dress, ruined shoes, holding a bouquet of dandelions, and she would have been holding her new friend, Frances the Frog, but she had escaped.  
Her grandmother met her in the kitchen and smacked the weeds out of her hands. She screamed, why can’t you keep your nice clothes clean, you little pig!  
This was Grandma Janet, matriarch of the Malone family. She was a pillar of her community. All Mary ever wanted was to please Grandma Janet.
  4. She never, ever could.
  5. Mary Teresa Malone was the fourth granddaughter of Janet Malone ( _née_ Sharkey). All the Malones and associated cousins lived in walking distance of each other in a northern Dublin neighborhood. They were a proud Irish family, with deep roots.
  6. Except… you always had to say “except” with Mary. The Malone family had deep roots, _except_ for Mary. Unlike her cousins and the majority of her class, she was biracial.
  7. Her mother, Emma Malone, had been born Lan Ma in Guangzhou, China. Her family had had its own roots, deep and treasured, but in a time of upheaval, Lan Ma had braved passage out of China for herself and her father, a biology professor. Anything had to be better. Ireland was where they wound up.
  8. Lan Ma/Emma Malone tried very hard.  
Mary at a young age understood that there were two women in her mother: the Irish immigrant who endured the pitiful scorn of her in-laws, and all the indignities of the expatriate. Then there was the sharp, confident Chinese emigrée who emerged when she and Mary were alone together—usually when they went shopping in Dublin’s Chinatown, or when they visited Mary’s grandfather in his little flat.


  1. They visited Mary’s grandfather at least once a week, and usually went on foot.  
Mary’s grandfather was named Lan Da-Min. He had been a professor of biology back home, with an emphasis on botany. He struggled to get by, but when his grandchild visited, all that was hidden. He doted on his little girl, and told her the life stories of the trees in his neighborhood, and all the creatures that lived by them. How Mary loved him.


  1. To her everlasting shame, she never mastered either Irish or Cantonese.
  2. Mary’s father was Patrick Malone, a science teacher at a Jesuit high school. He also tried very hard.
  3. “Ey, wot _are_ you?” Got flung a lot at Mary as she grew up. She would have loved to shrug on a truly Irish look: give her auburn waves, an alabaster complexion, and the wide blue eyes of a proper colleen! Or at least, she’d have liked to have fully Chinese looks, maybe like that beautiful movie star, Lucy Liu. But Mary was stuck looking betwixt-and-between, not one nor the other. She didn’t even have her mother’s light figure or graceful step.  
What Mary was instead was fat. In _this_ she actually did resemble her father’s family. Wonderfully rotund people, the Malones. By the time she was eight she well knew the litany of “she’ll never be a beauty, that one” or “shame she’s so fat, she’s got a good personality though” and she was familiar with swallowing down the shame.


  1. When Mary was eight, her Grandma Janet told her parents, “I’ve think it’s time to stop Mary’s dance lessons. She’s getting to be a big girl, and no talent at all. Save your money, Patrick.” Mary was present in the room. This was before the age of protecting children’s precious self-esteem.  
Mary lost her religion then—in the colloquial sense. “You’re cruel,” she told her grandmother. “I try so hard and it’s the one thing I like to do and I _am_ good at it and it’s not _fair_.”  
That’s as far as she got before Grandma Janet smacked her across the face. Janet informed Mary that she was a wicked, ungrateful little girl and it was past time she learned that she was ugly and no kind of dancer. Never speak that way to her again, was Grandma Janet’s last word before sweeping out the door.


  1. Mary was heartbroken. But her parents tried, as mentioned above. They knew there was one other thing she liked to do, so as a consolation, they paid for her enrollment in the Irish Junior Scientists’ Club, Dublin chapter, and a subscription to National Geographic.  
That turned Mary’s life around. In the Junior Scientists’ Club (or JSC), she found friends. Working with a team for a killer science fair presentation was, after all, more than a little like practicing for a dance recital. And National Geographic added a spice to afternoons with her grandfather. She would read articles to him, honing both his English and her understanding. He said, approvingly, that she was getting to be a sharp one.


  1. In the JSC, all kinds of weirdos were welcomed. They read lots, recorded their data, and shared anything that ignited their imaginations. They could express their artistic whims when crafting a DNA molecule out of pipe cleaner and beads. Mary’s first foray into public speaking came when she presented a paper on the threats facing Ireland’s ancient oak population (she thought she would die at first, but then they clapped for her!).
  2. And then there was food. Food and eating was woven into the club’s vernacular. Sharing snacks, bringing in treaties for a kid’s birthday, study sessions at so-and-so’s house with a baked potato bar on the side: celebration or consolation at the local Indian restaurant or pizza parlor. Mary hated food, and hated how dependent she was on it. Even the sweetest victory party was tainted because afterwards, Mary would sear herself with self-loathing, and try to live on crackers and cabbage for days. But for all that, in later years the smell of baked potatoes, or Madras egg curry, would bring all the emotions and welcome of the JSC back to her. And she would grin then, and send good wishes to the girl she used to be.
  3. The modern day Mary Malone is made up, she would say, of stripes and striations. Like sedimentary rock, all the Marys she has been are layered, the thirtysomething on the university student, who is layered over the teenager, who is layered over the girl who survived the hell of middle school, who is layered over a little child who dreamed of science and ballet.  
It’s not a simple way to describe it, but this isn’t a world for simple descriptions of anything, as Mary herself would tell you with a smile.  
What does Mary look like today? She looks like a biracial, Irish-Chinese woman. She’s a bit overweight, and not light on her feet, but she’s signed up for swing dancing classes—“It’ll be fun,” she tells Will. She wears rectangular glasses and sometimes stares into the middle distance, as if following a bird that no one else can see. When she sees photographs of herself, her resemblance to her late grandfather and to her mother makes her heart skip.  
Mary looks like herself.
  4. There’s a chunk of Mary that’s been almost completely excised. She doesn’t admit it to anyone and she doesn’t even like to acknowledge it. That’s the gap where Mary-the-Catholic used to live. The schoolgirl praying the rosary and finding peace, the acolyte who lay prone on an altar and dedicated her life to God—that layer is buried deep. But it’s still there.  
You could say the atoms of Mary-the-Catholic are dissolving, ever so gradually, in her soul. Over time those atoms will come back to her. Mary-of-the-Future, Mary-who-has-found-her-Life Partner, Mary-with-her-Vocation.
  5. There is only one way that Mary-the-Catholic has survived. It has to do with food. When she was Sister Mary, back when she was one of the Sisters of Humility, food was an important part of daily life. It was not simply gotten from a grocery store and nuked in the microwave, and then consumed with bleary eyes in front of a television screen.  
As a Sister of Humility, Sister Mary made long, careful trips to the grocery store, with a coupon book that would make any thrifty Irish grandma proud. The Sisters had a limited budget, so food had to be considered before every purchase and every meal. The Sisters regularly worked at soup kitchens and Meals on Wheels. They were activists, too: they wrote letters, marched on picket lines, and partook in boycotts, all to further the rights of fruit-pickers and all other laborers. “Saint Joseph prays for them,” the Mother Superior was fond of saying, “but it’s our job to work and _help.  
_And every meal was taken as a sisterhood, with a nice tablecloth, napkins, and silverware. The sisters would clasp hands and say Grace, with the Mother Superior adding little notes to the Almighty: grateful we are for this feast and the hands that brought it to our table, and while you’re at it, Lord of Hosts, we’ve got a few petitions, sure and there’s no rush, but just for when you get around to it…  
All these years later and it’s those Graces that Mary remembers. The Sisters sometimes teased the Mother (gently) about her laundry list of petitions. “Sure and the Almighty has got the time for it, hasn’t He?” was the usual response, with a deep chortle. Mary thinks she learned more from the Mother Superior than she realized for many years.


  1. That’s what lingers about Mary-of-Now. That’s the strongest trace remaining of Mary-the-Sister. An attitude towards food that was grateful, not resentful. Food provided fuel for all the amazing things her body could do—like eating fig rolls for “brain food” during competitions and tests, back in the JSC days. Protein to help her climb rocks and explore caves. Tea and little biscuits to keep her powered for long nights in the laboratory.
  2. Food was how she readjusted to life after her time with the mulefa. She actually cried the first time she ate potato crisps again. It was hard to adjust to the taste of processed food—talk about culture shock. But it was also how she eased back into her world, the needs of refrigerator, oven, and teakettle. She and Will learned to cook together, and it was takeout chicken tikka, and tea with raspberry biscuits, that saw them become real friends.



She took him on hikes around the streams she knew well, and when she pointed out the dance of living things, how they folded and hummed together in an ever-going harmony, Will’s eyes would light up with interest again, and joy.

That’s how Mary gained her first proper student.

  1. Will was a brave lad. A good lad. Will’s courage (to go back to school, for one; to trust a caretaker for his mother; to keep living day in and day out when his soul ached for another world) maybe began to kindle a little extra bravery in Mary’s heart. Her grandfather must be getting on in years; she hadn’t spoken to her family since she’d left the Sisters of Humility, but maybe it was time to open a new bridge. At least to try. Maybe not with Grandma Janet (still clinging to life out of sheer spite, Mary would bet) but with Emma Malone and with Lan Da-Min. She’d pay for a good lunch—nothing fancier than that. She’d make her plans, then see what life threw at her.  
And no matter what happened, she would return at the end of a couple days to Oxford, to her makeshift family with Will and Elaine Parry, and with Kirjava, and best beloved of all, her own dæmon, Temeraire. He embodied all the grace she thought he’d lost. He danced on air and danced on her thoughts. To love Temeraire made it so much easier to love herself. With his conversation and insight, old, deep wounds turned into scar tissue, gradually fading off. Sources of joy forgotten since childhood suddenly bubbled up again—and she called up old mates from the Junior Scientists’ Club, how are you doing, old sport?
  2. A person is made up of many layers. The greatest thing that ever happened to them, their vocation and calling in life, an understanding teacher, a moment of humiliation at age eight. A conversation with angels or one’s first science project presentation.  
“A mosaic of Mary, you might say,” offered Temeraire, circling overhead as they pondered all these little facts.  
Mary laughed, which baffled passersby, and kept striding towards home.



**Author's Note:**

> I feel like this merits a little explanation. For years I've seen this idea floating around tumblr that Mary Malone is British, of Chinese descent, because she uses the I Ching as taught to her by her grandfather. However, to my eyes the evidence is clear that Mary Malone is from an Irish family: her name, for starters, is so Irish as to be almost stereotypical. Her Catholic faith, plus the fact that she doesn't seem to think anyone will miss her when she leaves our world entirely. It makes sense to me to think that when she left the convent, her family cut off ties with her entirely. And yet, I do like the idea of her being biracial-- Chinese-Irish in Britain. I'm biracial myself, and there's not enough representation like that in fiction. If anyone else wants to run with the idea of Mary Malone as a biracial woman, please feel free! I'd love to see other people's takes on one of my favorite characters ever.  
> The notion of Mary being fat also comes from the text-- in The Amber Spyglass, it's mentioned that she's always thought of herself as slow and plodding. I'm not married to either of these headcanons, but I do find it very interesting. Hence this fanfic. Hope you enjoyed! R&R, stay safe out there.


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